This issue came properly onto my radar during a review of Chambers’ parental leave policy, when feedback suggested that we needed more support around IVF treatment and fertility challenges. As a chambers, we decided to make a monetary payment available for people taking time off for fertility-related treatment or bereavement leave; a step that I think is probably rare. This raised questions about whether it should really form part of a ‘parental’ leave policy, and whether there was more that we could, or should, be doing to support people in chambers facing fertility challenges. It was time to find out more.

One in six people are affected by infertility, all of whom are of working age when they are affected. While often considered to be a ‘women’s health issue’, infertility isn’t gender specific. The physical nature of treatment will often predominantly impact women and their careers, but it is a people issue, that intersects across the workforce. Fertility treatment and alternative paths to parenthood also need to be recognised and supported within the workplace for the LGBTQ+ community looking to build their family.

Once I began to seek information, it became clear that infertility challenges have a massive impact on barristers. This impact is exacerbated by the fact that it is so often a subject that people don’t want to speak about, especially at work. Hiding something so huge going on in your life, alongside managing the very real practical challenges it throws up, is emotionally and physically exhausting. For many, managing the grief and emotional turmoil of not getting pregnant, failed IVF and/or early pregnancy loss (or all three, one after another), will have a huge impact. One barrister told me: ‘I was really struggling emotionally before it even began, from not getting pregnant’ and another that: ‘It’s like a kind of trauma, how difficult it is to have an experience of infertility. I still have a reaction, even after having my child, when people tell me they are pregnant. I don’t think it will ever go away.’

Impact on barristers

There are substantial practical difficulties for barristers:

  • IVF treatment will usually involve dozens of medical appointments, most of which are dependent upon their cycles and the development of eggs and embryos. This makes the dates of these appointments unpredictable, and often means they are booked at very short notice. Juggling this with a busy practice, travel for work, deadlines and court hearings can be almost impossible.
  • Medications taken will often need to be injected at specific times (and kept cold until this happens) which can be a challenge for those travelling or engaged in long court or mediation days.
  • The hormones taken during IVF cycles will have a major impact on how women feel – mood, anxiety, resilience – and this can affect confidence, productivity and interpersonal relationships.
  • The mental load of arranging appointments, collecting and taking medication, endless phone calls with clinics, etc. should not be underestimated. It is exhausting and hugely distracting.
  • People want to feel well, get good sleep and be healthy for their treatment. This can affect the pace they want to, or feel they should, work at. It might not be possible or sensible to work ‘flat out’, or take on particularly stressful work, while undergoing fertility treatment or trying to get pregnant.
  • The financial pressures of the expense of IVF treatment, coupled with the need to take time off and, as a self-employed person, not earn, mean making difficult decisions and often feeling pressured to take on work that doesn’t fit.
  • Many people will now look at undertaking treatment abroad, which brings its own financial and logistical pressures.

The real-life impact of this is that barristers, especially those who do not feel empowered or willing to share this private ordeal with their clerks, will end up blocking out long periods from their diary, or turning away work, around the time of potential appointments, without any explanation. This reduces their earning potential in those periods and runs the risk of them appearing ‘flaky’ or ‘less committed’, which in turn brings its own anxiety about possible impact on career progress or not being taken seriously by clerks. One barrister told me: ‘There is always a slight trepidation of being “left behind” if you take too much time off.’

This difficulty is then coupled with the reality that different clerks, across a clerking team, will often repeatedly ask, in respect of different cases or opportunities, about one’s availability in a given period. ‘It’s hard for any self-employed barrister to turn down work. The treatment is hard, turning down work is hard, and having to do both at the same time is really upsetting. Then being constantly asked about it by clerks that don’t really understand is really hard to deal with.’

For many, IVF will be something that they have to undertake more than once, meaning that these challenges and career setbacks can continue not just for a few months, but over several years.

So what can we do?

Firstly, raise awareness. I believe we were the first chambers to offer fertility awareness training to all clerks and barristers. We particularly encouraged attendance by clerks, practice managers and members of chambers with leadership roles. I approached Fertility Matters at Work, one of a small number of organisations who offer such training. They made it effortless to organise, but more importantly, skilfully brought to life the scale of the challenges being faced by so many in our own chambers, almost invisibly. Since then, the Chancery Bar Association helped promote awareness, via an online seminar, open to all, in January 2026.

Your own chambers and specialist Bar associations can straightforwardly raise awareness, and it makes a difference. It’s instrumental in creating a culture where barristers, and staff members, feel able to discuss their ongoing experiences and needs with (at least) their senior clerks. Knowing that clerks already have some understanding, and the individual in question doesn’t have to explain it all to them from scratch, can make it easier to talk about and to seek support. Training also helps clerks and chambers to develop and shape the practical support that can be offered. At lot of that will take the form of diary management. Depending on an individual’s practice and needs, that might be more flexible working, less travel, more papers, more led work (so they don’t necessarily need to be at hearings and can work as part of a team, so it’s not all on their shoulders), or having a single point of contact for bookings so they are not having to explain themselves again and again.

One barrister commented: ‘Once you are pregnant people get it and automatically are supportive and want to take pressure off. That needs to happen for IVF too.’ Others have said that raising awareness might improve a better understanding of the need to have fewer events serving alcohol and that if someone isn’t drinking it might not be because they are pregnant; if choosing not to drink during IVF, the ‘knowing’ smiles of people thinking that means a pregnancy can be heartbreaking.

Secondly, mentors – inside or outside of chambers – could provide a fantastic and much needed support network. The Chancery Bar Association is setting up an informal scheme, and we are doing so in Chambers too. Someone who has had a really difficult IVF journey told me: ‘It’s so helpful to talk to anyone who has experience of IVF, but to talk to someone who had experience of IVF and being a barrister was really nice.’

Thirdly, review your policies. Couching fertility support in terms of ‘pregnancy leave’, or within a ‘parental leave’ policy, can be soul destroying when someone is unsuccessfully trying to get pregnant. Consider a separate standalone policy, promoting chambers’ desire and commitment to providing support and flexible working, or integrate fertility into ‘wellbeing’ initiatives instead. 

See also ‘Fertility and the Bar’, Karlia Lykourgou, Counsel, September 2024: – an argument for chambers-funded egg-freezing loans